


The Meek Don't Inherit A Thing

by JustAPassingGlance



Series: March Mayhem [5]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-17 09:49:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3524723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAPassingGlance/pseuds/JustAPassingGlance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine dreamed of Hollywood. His name in lights, his face in the pictures, and hundreds of fans lined up waiting to catch even the merest glimpse of him.</p><p>Sebastian dreamed of a future he would never go a day without food again and his mother and sister would always have a real roof over their heads and they could wear their Sunday best every day of the week.</p><p>(Bonnie and Clyde AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Meek Don't Inherit A Thing

Sebastian had been destined for the life of an outlaw.

Growing up his idol had been Jesse St. James, the Singing Bandit of the West. Before he had even learned his whole alphabet, Sebastian knew every detail of Jesse's life. Hours when he was supposed to be studying were spent day-dreaming of his hero.

Sebastian had always been fearless, just like Jesse, almost dying three times before he turned six. Although one of those times, he swore, was his sister's fault. Not that he remembered. But he knew in the way she always took extra care of him that it was the truth. And the scars from those incidents had been the pride of his youth; jagged lines across his chest, coming down from his hairline, and snaking up his back. 

At the age of twelve he started stealing bikes, the most profitable hobby a kid could have in his neighborhood. Steal the bikes, strip them to their parts, and remake them with different parts before selling them to the other boys clamoring for their own piece of freedom. He was better at in than almost anyone else. He could filch the bikes quick as a flash and he always double-checked to make sure that the new bike had no tell-tale signs that might give away the previous owner. Not like Jimmy who got knicked because he never remembered to remove the stickers or polish off the scuffs.

At sixteen Sebastian had been picked up three times. He always managed to talk his way out of an arrest and turned up home with an easy smile on face, claiming to have been held late at school. It was a lie and everyone knew it. Sebastian had stopped going to school more than two years before but they pretended like he still did to appease his mother.

*

Times hadn't always been hard for the Andersons. Blaine had hazy memories of when they were comfortable, when they lived on the outskirts of a city and he and Cooper only had to share a room, not a bed too. After the accident everything had changed. They moved to the middle of nowhere so Grandma Anderson could watch them while their parents scraped by doing menial jobs that constantly left them with just short of enough.

As soon as Cooper turned seventeen he was out the door and not looking back. He never told them where he went, but once every few years he would turn back up for a couple days and spoil Blaine rotten with candy and gifts. Cooper was the first person on their street to have a car and Blaine would never forget the late-night hours he spent listening for the rumble of the engine.

It was during that time that Blaine started going to the pictures, clinging to the childish hope that he would see Cooper's face in one. After a while he stopped scanning the actor's faces for his brother's and just enjoyed the film.

At sixteen Blaine had married, partially because it would one day be expected of him and partially because he actually thought he was in love. After a year Rachel had packed up her bags. 'Love me until I return?' She had asked, one foot already out the door. He had agreed, although privately he wondered if he had ever really been in love with her to begin with. Either way it didn't matter, they both knew she was never coming back.

* * *

Sebastian came roaring into Blaine's life, tearing past him in a once-shiny-but-now-dirt-streaked car on his way into town. Blaine stared in wide-eyed wonderment after it. Even covered in dirt it was the nicest that he had ever seen. Nicer even than the one the Barrow's owned and liked to drive around the countryside on Sundays and definitely nicer than Cooper's.

He coughed as the road dust tickled his throat and resisted the urge to go chasing after it like the gossip-hungry boys he could already see racing along in it’s dust.

By the time he made it to the main street a ring of curious townspeople had gathered to gawk at the newcomer, who certainly didn't mind the attention. The man was making a show of standing outside his car, polishing the hood down with a rag and grinning at his reflection every few minutes.

"Look at him," Quinn whispered as Blaine slid up next to her.

"I saw him on the road. Anyone know who he is?"

Quinn shook her head. "Doesn't seem like it. Look how everyone's staring."

" _We're_ staring," he hissed, ducking his glance away from the man.

"M’hmm," Quinn agreed. Her eyes lingered on the defined muscles of the man's arms as they worked over his car.

Around them whispered conversations continued. Everyone was wondering who he was and why he was there. Their little poverty wracked town didn't even have a filling station and never got visitors who weren't related, but no one made any move to approach him, despite the inviting smile the stranger was offering up to any (and every) one who met his eye.

"I'm going to talk to him," Blaine decided, stepping forward.

"What?" she squeaked, her hand shooting out to latch onto his arm, anchoring him back in place.

Gently he unpeeled her fingers. "Just because we don't ever get visitors doesn't mean we can't show hospitality to the one we do have," he said easily. He felt a little embarrassed by their actions. That they could stand and gawk with openly pointing fingers, but they couldn’t even go up and say hello and find out where this man was from and where he was going.

The whispers grew even more excited as Blaine walked the dozen or so feet to the car. He could hear Mrs. Williams, his elderly next-door neighbor chattering away about how the Anderson's had always raised their son right and Mr. Marcus' proud murmur of agreement.

As though this was a cue for everyone else to remember their manners, they all started scuttling on their way. Not, Blaine knew, to actually continue on with their day, but to find the best window to peer out from.

"Hello," he greeted the stranger. "Sorry about," he gestured around himself to the sudden flurry of activity on the street and the fluttering twitch of curtain's being pulled aside in the Caines's front parlor.  "I'm Blaine. Anderson."

"Sebastian Smythe," the man smiled brilliantly before carelessly throwing the rag into the car (a prop for show, not purpose, Blaine realized. Up close he could see the rag was almost as filthy as the car it was trying to clean) and reaching out to shake Blaine's hand.

It was a firm handshake, the grip confidentially tight. A man's handshake, Mr. Anderson would have said, even if Sebastian's thumb swiped across the back of Blaine’s in what nearly felt like a caress as it ended.

Blaine's face heated into a flush and Sebastian's smile grew wider.

"We don't get many visitors around here," Blaine explained in apology for the gaping. "And certainly never anyone…" his voice dropped off before he could utter the words 'like you' and instead he gestured to Sebastian and his car. "Mostly it's just family that come here. The few who got out." He blushed again and averted his gaze, feeling like he had shared too much with the new stranger, but Sebastian just kept looking at him like every word he was saying was the most interesting thing he had ever heard.

Then again, Quinn always did say he had a problem with projecting his own feelings onto other people..

"Can you drive?" Sebastian asked, noticing the way Blaine's eyes lingered on his car.

Blaine's eyes flickered back to Sebastian. "No. I've only ever been in one a handful of times. When my brother comes to town. I've been saving up though, thinking about getting one for myself." He didn't say that he was saving up for more than just the car but the knowing gleam in Sebastian's eye suggested that he knew. And not just knew, but had been there himself, once upon a time.

"Would you like to learn?"

"Learn to drive?" Blaine blinked.

"Sure." The word slid smooth and easy from Sebastian's lips, a shrug in verbal form.

"What's it like?"

"Driving?" Sebastian laughed, his head tipping his back to expose the long column of his throat. "It can't be described. It's like flying, only better."

"When I was a boy I always dreamed of flying." He remembered in the first few months after they moved he had spent hours and hours laying out in the fields, admiring the birds that swooped and soared overhead.

Free to go anywhere, that’s what he admired the most. A life of inherent freedom.

But when the time had come, he hadn't been able to spread his own wings. Rachel had though, just like the birds he had long envied. Disappearing without a second through, trusting in nothing but the wind and fate to carry her away.

"I can teach you,” Sebastian said, “if I can find somewhere close by for me to stay."

At some point in the conversation Blaine had leaned in towards Sebastian, close enough that he could smell the way the dirt of the road mixed with his sweat.

"Um, the uh," he licked his lips. "The Berrys always have a little house to rent, for anyone who wants it." The house was a cozy little cottage, just big enough for a newlywed couple getting ready to start their family together. It was idyllic with its green shutters and shiny brass door-knocker. The cottage was kept in perfect repair, despite the fact it had been vacant for years.

Blaine leaned in closer and lowered his voice. "The Berrys, they're both _bachelors_ ," he daringly whispered the town’s worst-kept secret "And only one of them is actually Mr. Berry, the other's surname is Coleman or Cohen or something, but no one has called him that in years."

Sebastian's lips quirked up into a grin and his eyes twinkled in a way that made Blaine's heart stutter in his chest, although the words that followed caused Blane’s heart to twist for an entirely different reason. "And no one has run them out of town?"

"The Berrys are one of the oldest families around here." He puffed himself up indignantly to hide that fact that he felt like he had been sucker-punched in the gut."And no one cares what a man does in the privacy of his own home. But if that's going to be a problem for yo-"

"Easy there," Sebastian held his hands up as though to fend off Blaine's attack. "No problems here," Sebastian assured in a lazy drawl. "If anything I might be warming up to this town." He winked. "Just point the way and I can meet you here tomorrow for our first lesson."

An uneasy guilt boiled up inside of Blaine for his outburst. “No, no. Let me take you. It’s been a while since I’ve seen them anyways and you’ll get a lower price if you’re with me. It’s no problem, I don’t have to be at work for a while still.”

Sebastian winked again. “Well I could never say no to a fellow like you.”

“Do you, um… we could walk over if you want? Or I could run ahead and you can follow in your car. Um, or…”

“Or I could give you a lift. Find out how compatible we are in the car before we start our lessons.”

“Yeah, yes. That’s fine. Good. Compatibility is important. To know if we’re compatible. Definitely need that.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Sebastian’s grin was about to stretch off his face.

“Good,” repeated Blaine.

“Very.” Still grinning, Sebastian went around to the other side of the car and opened the passenger-side door with a low bow and a cheeky smile at some peeping neighbor.

Flustered, Blaine followed him and gracelessly climbed into the car, offering a smile of his own as Sebastian shut the door once he was settled.

“Consider this your first lesson,” Sebastian said as he slid smoothly into his seat. “Just watch what I do.”

Blaine didn’t look away until they got to the Berry's.

* * *

Over the next two weeks Blaine and Sebastian met up every morning. Blaine was meant to be working, but managed to convince Mr. Browning for mornings and early afternoons off. Blaine had never so much as taken a sick day in his nearly nine years there and his request was granted every day with a fond sort of tolerance.

Most days they didn't get back until well after Blaine's shift should have started and he shuffled into work, guilty-eyed and abashed but the scoldings were never bad enough to make him be on time the next day.

Blaine wasn't exactly a natural at driving, but he picked it up quick enough, even with Sebastian's laughing as the car bucked and jerked beneath them. He still couldn't go as fast as Sebastian, although once he managed to get the car up so fast it really was like they were flying. It was on a mostly straight stretch of road and as soon as the road had started to curve he ended up driving into a ditch, trembling as the car was enveloped in a cloud of dust.

He loved every moment learning, but he especially loved after the lesson had ended when they just sat in the car, or on nicer days out in a field, and talked.

They talked so much that, by the second day, it felt like there was nothing that they didn't know about each other.

Lying in an abandoned field Sebastian had told Blaine all about his childhood, about his over-protective sister, and the cousins who made all of their money from cock fighting. About being so hungry growing up he could have sworn his stomach had tried to eat itself and all the candy bars he had filched, at first to stop the hunger pangs and then for the rush he got.

Blaine recollected on life before the accident and how hard an adjustment it was for his whole family after the moved. The bickering that was brought about by the painful transformation of what had been necessities into luxuries. And he confessed to his failed marriage, not something he could hide with the ring still on his finger and the pictures of him and Rachel decorating the Berry’s house.

Together they planned their escape from town, to California or New York so Blaine could pursue his acting career. Anywhere so long as it was far away.

With much encouragement, Sebastian had convinced Blaine to recite an entire Shakespearean monologue and became convinced that Blaine would make it big, even from just those few minutes. “You got it, Blaine,” he had said. “I don’t know exactly what it is, but you got it in spades.” And Blaine had blushed and preened under the praise, hearing it in a way he never did when it was coming from his mother. 

Sebastian was like no one Blaine had ever met before. “He's something else,” he had found himself saying vaguely when Quinn asked about him. “Just really out there.” It was the best he could come up with, even if it was inadequate.

It was more than the fact that Sebastian had achieved what Blaine had always longed for. Sebastian had gotten out, had said goodbye to the life he hated and was seeking out the one he wanted. Living free from rules and restrictions, set on a coarse charted solely by him.

That by itself fascinated Blaine, but there was something purely _Sebastian_ that Blaine couldn’t shake. Even when they weren’t together, Blaine was thinking about the other man and the time they had spent together. Just the memory of the way they had spent the morning lounging on the hood of Sebastian’s car, knuckles lazily brushing against each other every once in a while sent his head to spinning and his breath stuttering from his lungs.

Within five days Blaine had known. Known that he would never feel the way he did for Sebastian for anyone and that what he had felt for Rachel had been nothing but a shimmering imitation of what true love could be.

And Sebastian felt the same. Blaine could tell by the way his fingers lingered and the way he looked at Blaine. For hours it seemed, Sebastian could look at him. It was like he held all the secrets of the world and if Sebastian just stared for long enough he could figure them out.

On the sixth day, while Sebastian was trying to riddle the universe from Blaine’s eyes, Blaine leaned over and kissed him. Just like that. Kissed him like they had done it a thousand times before. The last thing he had seen before his eyes fluttered closed were Sebastian’s eyes widening comically in surprise and his hands flying out to cup Blaine’s face to coax him into continuing the kiss.

After that, their free time became much less relaxed and much more frantic, filled with kisses and touches and wondering how they had even lived before without the spark that had ignited the world around them.

It was a bliss beyond heaven and it wasn’t until they had satiated themselves on each other that Blaine would regretfully insist that he had to get back and Sebastian would regretfully bring him, leaving him with a promise to see him the next day.

“You promise you’ll be there?” Blaine would ask, every day without fail. He knew Sebastian would be. Knew it in every bone of his body, but he just liked it when Sebastian drawled,

“Not even the good Lord could stop me.”

So when Sebastian wasn’t waiting for him one morning, Blaine knew there was something wrong.

Running faster than he had ever done in his life, he sprinted through town and to the Berry’s cottage, fists hammering against the door even as his heart stopped in his chest because Sebastian’s car was nowhere in sight.

He cried aloud in relief when the door swung open only to be faced with a sympathetic Hiram Berry.

“He’s not here, son,” Hiram said gently, echoing words he had uttered in another time and another place, but breaking Blaine’s heart in so much the same way.

“No.” Blaine’s head shook of its own accord. “No he-” the word _promised_ died on his lips as he realized how juvenile it sounded. But their parting words were more than just a promise. It was a solemn oath that he would be there and they would be together.

“Blaine!” The echoing burst of Quinn’s voice startled the two men.

“Quinn.” Blaine’s hands reached for his best friend. “Mr. Berry said… he said…” Blaine’s mind grappled with the words and his lips refused to even utter them. “Sebastian,” he said weakly.

“I know.” Quinn held him tightly. “I know. It’s all over town.”

Blaine tore himself away, looking between Quinn and Hiram in confusion. “What’s all over town?”

Sebastian leaving might be news, but not news enough to be all over town so early in the morning. Nothing spread that quickly. Not unless someone had…

“No,” he whispered. His knees went weak and he had to grab onto the door frame to keep from sinking to the ground.

“Oh, Blaine. I thought you knew,” Quinn sighed, her hands reaching out for him again. “Sebastian’s been arrested. They came for him this morning.”

* * *

Within four hours of Sebastian’s arrest, the local paper had put out an extra edition, little more than a two page bulletin to capture the grit of the story and promises to keep the town abreast of any and all updates. By the next day word had travelled outside their little town and other papers began with it. Quickly, it was determined that Sebastian had not only stolen the car he was arrested for, he was also linked to a number of small-time robberies that had occurred within the last year. There were even rumors that his crime spree started as far away as Texas, although no one gave that too much credit.

'Baby-Faced Bandit' the papers called him, which left Blaine hissing because Sebastian certainly wasn't 'only just seventeen,' like the Tribune was claiming.

And that baby-face became front page news on a daily basis as yet another source came forward to link Sebastian to yet another heist. By the time Sebastian went to trial, the press had implicated him in 71 other crimes. Most of them contradicted each other— had him in up to four different towns miles and miles away from each other in the span of a day. But some of them did line up, tracking his progress across state lines, never too far from the  types of tourist camps Sebastian had mentioned that he preferred.

"They're just pinning him with every unsolved crime in the area," Quinn had been quick to assure Blaine when he showed up hyperventilating on her porch, convinced Sebastian was going to the chair. "And they don't use the chair on petty thieves anyways, no matter how much they steal." She tore the latest article from the rest of the paper, taking extra care not to rip the picture. "Here," she said, handing it over to Blaine with a wink, "for your collection."

Quinn, it turned out, was a surprising expert on these matters. The result, she confessed, of a long-time on-again, off-again not-quite courtship with a convict by the name of Noah. At any other time Blaine would have been furious that she had kept a secret like that from him for so long, but instead he just clung to her words like a lifeline.

In the almost four weeks between the arrest and the trial, Blaine wrote Sebastian every day and tried not to feel too dejected when he received nothing in return. But he was determined to keep up his chattering flow, each one of his letters picking up where the last one left off.

The day before the trial he found Sebastian's letters hid down the back of the couch, right where his mother always sat. He knew his parents were just trying to protect him, but that didn't stop the yelling match the ensued that half the neighborhood pretended not to hear.

It was his life, he insisted and his mistakes to make and eventually his parents had agreed, at least enough that his mother promised to never hide his letters again.

The letters were the only thing that got him through the trial and subsequent sentencing.

Five years, the judge had declared with a stern look on his face, almost twice the length that most bandits in the area got, but almost half of what the state had wanted. That baby-faced look that the papers had been wild about played in Sebastian's favor. The judge had believed that he was only 17 and sentenced him as a juvenile.

* * *

"Good morning, sir," Blaine smiled brightly at the jailer, taking care to keep his speech polished, like a person from a big city might speak. Nervously he ran a hand up to flatten down his hair, making sure the gel was holding it down in all the places it normally came free. His other hand clutched onto his new hat that he had bought to go with a second-hand suit which, in its first life, had cost more than anything he owned.  "I'm here to see, Sebastian Smythe." He smiled again, this time adding a hint of innocent charm.

"Mr. Smythe can't have visitors," the guard replied gruffly.

"Oh, right. I understand," he sighed in disappointment. "Do you mind?" He pointed to the row of chairs besides him. "It was a long drive."

For the first time the guard looked up. He was younger than Blaine had thought at first, barely more than a boy. "You're from out of town?" he asked.

"New York,” he drawled, “Have you ever been?"

Mouth gaping, the boy shook his head.

"Greatest city anywhere," Blaine said confidentially. "The lights... the sounds… there's nowhere like it in the world." Sure that he had sparked the boy's interest, he launched into elaborate stories about his New York life, most of them taken from the more obscure pictures he had seen and stories he had read in magazines. By the end of his tales the boy was starry-eyed in wonder.

"Of course, as soon as I heard my brother had gotten himself into a peck of trouble I left all that behind." Blaine let his words slide into a more dialectic twang, a hint that maybe where he started wasn't so far from where the boy was now. The fact that that place was the next town over, one too small to even have its own jail, and that he had yet to make it out were inconsequential details that only detracted from his story.

"Mr. Smythe is your brother, sir? We were under the impression he didn't have any family around here."

Blaine cocked his eyebrow in what he thought was an approximation of Sebastian's own disdainful look.

"Right, right," the guard said hurriedly. "New York's not exactly around here."

Blaine smiled, this time warm and friendly and him again.

"He's allowed family visitations," the guard rushed to assure him. "Just one moment." In the same breath he was out of the room and his footsteps were nothing more than an echo down the hall.

Within five minutes the boy was back and ushering Blaine down the hall, past a series of administrative offices, before going up a rickety staircase. At the top of the stairs they turned right and stopped in front of a wooden door with the words "Visitation Room" stamped in peeling letters across the window.

"Blaine," Sebastian's eyes lit up as Blaine was let into the visiting room. There were scratches along the left side of his face, a bruise shadowing his jaw, and his hair, which had been so perfectly coiffed every other time Blaine had seen him, was limp and unkempt. The pallor in his face and the bags under his eyes suggested that he hadn't slept during his month in lock-up, but his smile was just as wide and beautiful as it had ever been.

"Brother!" Blaine winked at him. "Mama always said you were the troublemaker of the house." In four strides he had crossed the room and, pulled Sebastian up so he could throw his arms around him in a sturdy embrace. He sighed as he was enveloped in Sebastian’s arms, taking a second to breath in his smell. Ducking his head he secreted a kiss to Sebastian's collarbone before stepping back.

"Mama was never wrong," Sebastian replied in amusement.

"Thank you for letting me see him, sir," Blaine turned back to the guard. "I promise I'll only be a few minutes."

"No, no," the officer held up his hand. "You came a long way for your brother. You can have as long as you want." With a smile, and what might have been an aborted bow, he backed out of the room.

"Before you suggest anything unbecoming," Blaine said immediately, knowing that look in Sebastian's eye and the quirk in his mouth, "I got in here because I," he placed a hand on his chest and readopted his polished tone, "am a brilliant actor," he swept a bow.

"Broadway doesn't know what it's missing," Sebastian laughed.

"I'm still going to make it there. Or California," Blaine assured.

"You'd be cheating the world if you didn't."

Blaine flushed. "Oh." His mind still fumbled with the amount of faith Sebastian had in his future. Although his friends and family had always supported his dreams, it felt like no one really believed in him until Sebastian. Not since Rachel, at least.

Finally being in the same room as Sebastian was almost too much for him to take. His heart thrummed in his chest and a chorus of _its him!_ rang in his head. On unsteady legs, he sank down into the closest chair. As he took his own seat, Sebastian snuck a quick glance at the door to make sure they weren't being watched before hooking his foot around Blaine's ankle.

"You've been getting all my letters?" Blaine asked teasingly. He knew Sebastian had since he read and re-read Sebastian's replies until they were burned into his memory. He had clung to those letters in the long weeks since Sebastian’s arrest. He hadn't realized exactly how much Sebastian meant to him until he hadn't been able to see him every day. In the few days they had spent together, Sebastian had become the light in a life he had otherwise been giving up hope on.

"You know I have." Sebastian smiled his secret smile, the smile that only Blaine got to see. "And you've been getting mine."

"Now I am."

"Mama bear?"

"Mama bear," Blaine agreed, a little hesitant.

When he first found Sebastian’s letters he had written that they must have gotten lost in the mail, or something and he was sorry if Sebastian thought he had lost interest because he hadn't. _Stupid mail,_ he had wrote and left it at that. Blaine always liked to pretend like he was a well and truly a grown man, completely out from his parent's thumb, even if he wasn't out from under their roof.

"I must be crazy for chasing after her cub."

"Is that what you're doing?" Blaine leaned closer, letting his fingers trail up and down Sebastian's forearm. "Chasing after me?"

"I thought I already got you."

Blaine's breath caught in his throat. "You do," he promised. 

They talked steadily for the next two hours. Like in his letters, Blaine could tell that Sebastian was hiding a lot from him about what his life in prison was really like. From the way he told it, they might as well have just been farm workers, albeit with longer days and the inability to go home at the end of it. Sebastian’s scratched and bruised face was explained away with a tight laugh and a dismissive ‘just a scuffle in the yard.’

But about some things Sebastian was very candid. His graphic description of the food churned Blaine’s stomach just to hear and he was more than eager to share stories of his fellow inmates and the various heists and hijinks that had landed them there.

In turn, Blaine told Sebastian all about the bar, updating him on the latest town gossip. Sebastian’s notoriety had finally started to fade in light of the fact that Mrs. O’Connor had come back, clearly pregnant, four months after running off with a traveling salesman. And Blaine’s casual mention that he was thinking of finally, actually buying a car of his own spiraled into a half an hour discussion of the best and worst models and the spark finally coming back to Sebastian’s eyes.

But finally Blaine could no longer pretend that he didn’t have a job to leave and a bus schedule that he needed to stick to if he had any hope of making it back in time for work. 

"I don't know if I'll be able to get back before you're transferred." Blaine held Sebastian's hand in a bone-tight grip.

The transfer was something they had barely talked about. The jailhouse wasn't big enough to house long term residents and eventually they all got shipped out either to a bigger prison or prison farm. Sebastian, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind, would be sent to a work farm. After all the publicity he received, all the crimes he had supposedly committed, the system wanted to make an example of him and there was no better way to make an example of him than by sending him to a farm.

"Write me every day?" Sebastian begged, eyes gone wide and scared. If possible he was gripping Blaine's hand even tighter than Blaine was gripping his.

"I will," promised Blaine. "I will. Every single day."

"Wait for me?"

Blaine nodded, too choked up to say anything else as Sebastian's left hand came up to cradle his face.

* * *

For the month and half after his visit, Blaine kept his promise. Every day he sat down and wrote Sebastian a letter, even if he hadn't gotten a letter of his own for that day. It became harder after Sebastian was transferred. The work farm was farther away and the mail out of it less reliable. But still he wrote, even on days when he had nothing much to say he'd scribble out silly poems or other nonsense.

They started up a game where Blaine would describe an ordinary item in the most obscure terms and Sebastian would guess what he was describing. Most of the time Blaine forget what he had been writing about by the time he got the response, a fact that Sebastian had probably caught on to when he never guessed wrong.

Greedily he read all of Sebastian's letters, drinking in every detail, no matter how mundane. There were complaints about the food ( _I can't eat this for one more day…_ ), descriptions of the field they had Sebastian toiling in ( _… lined with trees. Must be half a mile thick, or more. The guards are always less vigilant in the early afternoon. Maybe one day I'll convince Nichols to go exploring with me…_ ), memories of the past ( _…that first day we went driving and you were so wide-eyed and amazed, like you had just seen God or something)._

Blaine knew that Sebastian wasn’t telling him everything, that he was leaving out the tortures they called punishment and making his work day seem like just another day in the fields and not the slave labor it was. He had heard the rumors of men willing to mutilate themselves just to escape the farms, a few missing fingers was nothing in comparison to even another week out there.

It was the not knowing that got to him. Not knowing, he was sure, was even worse than knowing. But with Sebastian not telling him anything and just pretending none of it was happening, it left Blaine's mind to run wild, his imagination driving him to the crazed depths of despair

The closest Sebastian ever got to admitting anything was in a letter dated almost exactly three months after his transfer.

 _Three more months. I just keep telling myself I only have three more months and I'm gonna keep telling myself that for the rest of my five year sentence._ He wrote. _Three more months. And then I'm gonna make all of this up to you._

Blaine read the letter, the first in weeks, and carefully folded it up and put it with the others. By that time he had stopped sending letters completely.

* * *

Anxiously, Blaine drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. He had sat out there, in his car, every day for the last two weeks, surrounded by knee high grass with nothing to listen to but the trickling of the nearby stream. It was more than 6 months since he had last seen Sebastian and almost a year since the arrest.

Every day for those two weeks Blaine had sat on the riverbank, one trembling hand on the wheel and feet tapping against the pedals. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Ears strained to hear anything more than the chirp of a bird or rustle of leaves.

And after two weeks he heard it. There were shouts and yells, gun fire, and the baying of dogs.

For a moment he froze, hardly daring to hope that this was the moment he had been waiting for. Then his hands and feet were in action, starting the engine even has he shook from anticipation.

Another minute later he saw Sebastian's sprawling limbs crashing through the line of trees separating the farm from the river before splashing through the shallow water, dogs practically nipping at his heels, lawmen yelling and shooting as they gave chase. Ensuring the engine was still running, Blaine threw the door open and slid across the seat.

Not even slowing down, Sebastian leapt into the car, slamming the door so quickly his sleeve caught. The ferociously snapping jaws of one of the dogs appeared at the window and it growled through it’s practically foaming mouth.

In an instant they were tearing away, trundling up the dirt road whose every curve had been burned into Blaine's memory after days of revisiting it. But this time they sped along so quickly Blaine could hardly recognize where they were.  

He couldn't believe it was real until he slid his hand up Sebastian's thigh, not in an attempt to distract his driving but a reassuring weight. This was real. Sebastian was out and Blaine was with him. They had the rest of their lives to spend together.

“Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” Sebastian joked, let still tense beneath Blaine’s hands and eyes cautiously guarded.

“I wasn’t sure… your letters. I’ve been coming for a few weeks.”

It had been a harebrained plan, if plan was even the word for it. The cobbled together result of snippets of conversation and coded written references. A time and place hidden in otherwise innocuous words. So many times Blaine had second guessed them, sure he had misinterpreted. But no matter how many times he poured over the letters no other answers had come.

“I never doubted.” Sebastian smiled, true and genuine as the last remnants of tension left his body. For all the Blaine had doubted, Sebastian had it worse. His stakes had always been higher and all he could do was hope that Blaine had understood and would be there when he needed him. A trust that became even more unsure as Blaine’s silence grew.

“I wrote. Even though…” He bit his lip, hoping Sebastian would understand and forgive. He reached into the back and grabbed a sack full to bursting of all the letters he had written but hadn’t sent. “I thought if everyone thought we weren’t in contact any more… And my folks think I left for New York weeks ago. We’ll be safer this way, won’t we?”

“Who ever said you were just a pretty face?” Sebastian teased, hand leaving the wheel so he could lace their fingers together.

"But I don't…" Blaine swallowed and withdrew his hand, curling it in shame in his own lap. "I wasn't able to take money from my family. It didn't feel right." Day after day he had paced back and forth in front of the tiny family safe. Some days he had gone so far as to open it, but he was never able to take anything out. "I couldn't," he repeated.

Most of that money had come from him, earned through years of work. It wouldn’t have been stealing, per se. Not when it was just taking something that already belonged to him. And his dad always said that it would go to him, anyways. A starter fund for his future.

But he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t take it. Not when it was their emergency fund for the years they didn’t make enough and his father’s health not getting any better.

"We'll figure out something," Sebastian promised. His eyes never left the muddy road, but his hand reached out to grab Blaine's again. "I'll get us money somehow," he vowed.


End file.
